Three young adult book series to read instead of Harry Fucking Potter

J.K. Rowling is an evil fucking monster.

Everyone knows the alleged story of Joanne Rowling, AKA J. K. Rowling, the supposedly near-destitute single mom waitress who first began to write the story of an unloved little boy named Harry Potter, forced to sleep in the cupboard, who was destined to become a great wizard, scribbling out the ideas on a work napkin. And everyone knows that those ideas became a seven-volume series, which went on to become one of the best-selling book series in history, with over 600 million copies sold. Everyone knows this.

That's the story.

But the truth is, she's just an evil terf bigot.

Terf stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. This means that they're evil bigots who claim their bigotry against transpeople–transwomen specifically–is all being done in the name of defending women. They call themselves “gender critical” and say that they believe in “sex-based rights,” as well as “LGB rights,” deliberately leaving off the "T" at the end, and that they're simply trying to “protect women and girls." As a result, they’ll never miss an opportunity to foam at the mouth over their favorite hatred, especially to rail against "men in women's sports." Because of this, because most people aren’t monsters, they get a lot of Push-back wherever they go, and so they have grown to hate being called terfs, because they know that the word terf now actually means a bigot who specifically targets transpeople.

And like all bigots, terfs are nothing if not deeply mired in intersectionality.

As the saying goes, scratch a terf, and along with their transmisogyny, a torrent of misogyny and racism will come geysering out too. This is why they're all screaming about transwomen in the WNBA currently, even though there are no transwomen playing in the WNBA... it's because they hate Black women too. This is why they’re also talking about “testosterone levels” all the time. To the terf, Black women and transwomen pose the same threat, because terfs don’t consider either of them to be true women (read white women).

And this is why they glommed onto Caitlyn Clark so hard.

Caitlyn Clark was their Great White Hope. She was their way to finally be able to enjoy watching basketball, a sport that, much like boxing, many white Americans view as having been stolen from them by Black people. They think this due to their belief that, much like they believe with transwomen, Black athletes have an “unfair natural advantages.” That isn’t to say that these people like basketball. They don’t. Or at least, not women’s basketball. This is doubly true for all the white dudes who are now red-faced and screaming about transwomen in the WNBA. Two years ago, those same dudes could be heard calling the WNBA a waste of time, with no future, dismissively referring to it as “girls” basketball. The reason all these “new fans” are bandwagoning her so hard is because, through Caitlyn’s occasional rivalries on the court, these bigots now have a ready supply of Black women to hate. And they love that. They absolutely love that. Just listen to absolute venomous joy with which they still say Angel Reese's name.

They've turned it into a slur.

But to be fair, in Caitlyn’s defense, while she is most likely a typical privileged white centrist, and ultimately a silently complicit coward, at least she doesn’t feed into this machine. This frustrates the bigots, obviously, who, more than any other group alive, wait in a constant state of rapturous anticipation for even the smallest bit of acknowledgement from their bigot heroes for their dedication to the cause.

That’s why they've now latched onto Sophie Cunningham so hard.

A big dumb bigot and a middling reserve guard, Sophie Cunnigham is known for acting as the beloved Caitlyn's "protector" and as an enforcer on the court from the "abuses" of the Black players. She points at them, and the white people absolutely lose their shit. So Sophie is now the new Great White Hope for these bigots. This is especially true after Sophie’s recent ESPN profile where she said she wanted to "protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” absolute bullshit that she later doubled down on when asked, even though this is a wholly made-up fantasy “problem” that has never actually been a real problem ever anywhere.

But despite this, despite the fact transwomen are women, and the fact that these dumb terf bigots are obsessed with a fake, totally made-up problem—as there is not only no "threat" posed to women's sports from transwomen, but also because there are fewer "elite tier" transwomen athletes in the U.S. than there are measles cases at the moment, and of the few of them that there are, none are dominating their chosen sport—these dumb bigots refuse to relent, and instead, proving just how much of a bigot they are, they choose instead to align themselves with open nazis, complete dipshit wannabes, and abusive men who hate women...

Because bigotry is only ever about the blind hatred, nothing else.

And that's the real story of J.K. Rowling.

Much like Elon Musk, J.K. Rowling could have taken her billions of dollars and simply fucked off. She could've spent her remaining days being loved by her then legions of fans, and idly alternating between her little cottage down in Clacton-on-Sea, or in her onyx castle atop the wind-swept peak of Kadath-in-the-Cold-Waste in Antartica, or in her remote jungle treehouse in the Brazilian state of Acre now that all those pesky natives have been cleared out, or perhaps in her apocalyptic bunker high in the Canadian Rockies with its indentured staff that has never felt the light of the sun upon their faces, or her gilded NYC Trump Tower condo with its view of the Park and its smell of soiled Depends, or her London flat overlooking the British Museum and its vast collection of stolen artifacts, or at her 60s era spy-fi aesthetic Underwater Lair deep beneath the storm-tossed waters of the Bering Sea where she funds black science cloning experiments, or in her swanky futuristic minimalism and AI-run Akasaka residence in downtown Tokyo, or maybe even on her private island retreat guarded by human/animal hybrids in the Canaries, or on her SuperYacht, the one with the constant oil leak, but nooooooo...

She's too full of evil and hate.

Still... despite the fact that the Harry Potter books have always had a "vague" stink of racism, antisemitism, and pro-colonial views, while also being surprisingly pro-slavery, despite the fact that, due to all the controversies surrounding her, being a Harry Potter Adult in 2026 indicates that you're either an asshole or an oblivious asshole, despite the fact that the franchise peaked following the final Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows–Part 2, in 2011, an adaptation of the the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, published in 2007, thus bringing the story of The Boy Who Lived to an end over 15 years ago… the franchise is still a behemoth worth an estimated $35.1 billion dollars.

The MCU is worth 37.5 billion... no big deal.

This is bad, because JK Rowling has made no secret of the fact that she uses her immense wealth, estimated to be around $1.2 billon, in order to persecute trans people. Her massive wealth isn't the only problem either, she is constantly online over at Elon Musk's Nazi site, using her large platform almost exclusively and relentlessly to spread hate and disinformation. And at every opportunity, she's doubled-down and has only gotten worse and more hateful. She’s attacked and silenced a Holocaust scholar after being credibly accused of Holocaust Denial. She recently attacked Amnesty International too, an organization she actually once worked for (but was fired for slacking off), after a 2025 report linked her, and one of the organizations she funds, with the recent rise of anti-rights movements targeting women and LGBT+ people in the UK.

What a great person, right?

But yeah, sure, it's totally okay... go ahead and keep your Harry Potter crap.

Because what this all means is that you can't "separate the art from the artist" when it comes to Harry Potter and J.K. Rowlings, not like you otherwise might be able to with a creator like H. P. Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard, for instance. To put it simply, there is no ethical consumption of Harry Potter. J.K Rowling is alive, and she uses her Harry Potter money to deliberately hurt people. This means that, if you support Harry Potter in any way, big or small, whether it's financially, or by simply boosting its profile, thereby possibly encouraging others to seek out and to support the franchise financially themselves, then you are directly contributing to her efforts to harm other people.

And thus, the raison d'etre for this whole post.

Because later this year, on Christmas fucking Day to be precise, they're relaunching the Harry Potter franchise for a whole new generation as a multi-season show on HBO. Each episode is said to have a budget of around $100 million dollars. That means, with most likely eight episodes per season, for at least seven (one for each novel) to a possible ten season long run, the whole show could end up costing from $5.4 billion to upwards of $8 billion total.

It's the most expensive show ever.

But as the number of creators who shun or walk away from the production, due to Rowling's bigotry (while others prove to be willingly complicit), it's clear that HBO/WB Discovery is starting to get nervous. This is why Rowling recently tried to parse her hatred by "clarifying" that she doesn't hate transadults, just transteens. This is why while you'll likely see more obvious bullshit like that in the days and weeks to come too.

Which, as I said, is why I'm posting this, because...

It's time to abandon Harry Potter. Past time. It's time to walk away from them. Way past time. Take your good memories and move on, because J.K. Rowling is a bad person, an evil and ugly and giddily unrepentant monster with just a shriveled little bit of tar for a soul. It's time to stop reading the books, and to let them go. It's time to move on. You don't have to throw them away, but maybe it's best to finally take them down from the shelf, pack them up, and store them away in the back of a garage or a storage container somewhere. It’s time to buy a different colored scarf. It’s time to quit your House. It’s time to break your wands and throw them away. As I said… it’s past time. Don't buy the new editions of the books. Don’t encourage others to read the books either. Don’t buy the movies. In fact, don't buy any of its various and sundry merchandising, not the games, not the figures, not the stickers, or anything branded with the Harry Potter name. It’s time to find a new franchise to love. It’s time to read better books than the somewhat poorly-written rambles of a hate-monger. Past time. To everything a season, my friends, and Harry Potter’s season has passed.

But most of all… do not watch the show.

Not even a "Hate Watch" or by pirating it, because in this case, Hate Watching or pirating it is just you doing some Good German shit. The whole point of the new show is that it's trying to create a whole new generation of fans. The entire reason that she's doing this is specifically because her franchise is sunsetting. The success of this show means the continued success of J.K. Rowling. The continued success of J.K Rowling means the continued funding of hate organizations.

We don't want that.

I know, I know, I'm asking so much, right? Such a big ask. I know, I do. Believe me, I do. After all, due to having grown up in one of the whitest and the middlest parts of white middle America, I know that the only thing that white America hates more than people who aren’t like them, is accountability. Or having to make even the tiniest sacrifice, because of the inconvenience. Or even the idea of being held to any kind of standard, because that’s rude to point out hypocrisy. Or being asked to stand by the values they claim to embrace, because again… rude.

But it’s these moments that tell the world who you are. You lose nothing by ditching this woman and her garbage, and yet, by simply refusing to support her in any way, you're telling the whole world that you're not a bigot piece of shit.

It’s just that easy to be a good person…

So, for my part, I've got three books series here that I read and reread and loved dearly at various points in my elementary and middle school years. These are some of the books that engendered a love of reading within me, and led to me finding so many other amazing books too. But be warned, these books may not be the perfect book for your particular perfect angel. There’s no guarantees here. There could be some potentially heavy topics broached within these pages. Maybe a bit of blood and death and sex too. All sorts of shit. who knows? Also, some of them may have been written by authors who might have had some questionable views.

Basically, what I’m saying here is, you may not find these suggested books to be appropriate for own young adults. That’s fine. I’ll leave that, as well as the actual chore of being a parent, to the suckers who signed up for it, because I do not give a fuck either way. Bottom line? No matter what else may or may not be true, one thing that these books are not doing…?

They aren’t actively funding bigotry and hate.

The Dragonlance Chronicles

The Dragonlance Chronicles is a trilogy of fantasy novels published in the ’80s, and written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. The three books in the series are called Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning. They do involve a couple of dragons, if you were wondering. Set in the fantasy world of Krynn, still recovering from the near-apocalyptic calamity known as The Cataclysm, it is a world at war, a world that has been abandoned by its gods.

But maybe no longer...?

The story centers on a group of characters and their adventures during a conflict known as the "War of the Lance" against the Dragon High Lord Verminaard and his evil legions. There's Tanis Half-elven, a brooding ranger with a foot in two worlds... and a home in neither. There's Sturm Brightblade, a solemn knight clad in his father's armor and carrying his father's sword, forever seeking to live up to his father's legacy. There's Goldmoon, a blonde barbarian princess, and a priestess who carries the mysterious Blue Crystal Staff. There's Riverwind, a wise and stoic barbarian plainsman warrior, and Goldmoon's devoted betrothed. There's the twin brothers, Cameron, a warrior, massive and formitable, albeit slow-witted, and the mage, Raistlin, frail, but clever, ambitious, and powerful. There's Flint Fireforge, a gruff and grizzled dwarven warrior with a heart of gold. There's Tika, a lusty and busty former barmaid who enjoys a good brawl. Then there's Tasslehoff Burrfoot, a kender (think: skinny hobbit) pickpocket, with a severe case of wanderlust. Finally, there's Fizban the Fabulous, a befuddled old mage with secrets of his own. They are known as The Heroes of the Lance.

Yes, "lances" also figure prominently into the story, why do ask?

Fun, new-reader friendly, pretty decently well-written, and a quick read, the Dragonlance Chronicles are the absolute definition of a classic "western" sword and sorcery fantasy series, not to mention of the best examples of the genre. It is very clearly the bastard child of a post Tolkien/early Gygax D&D world, for all the good and ill that comes with that, a chaste, but also PG-rated adventure. They were trendsetters too. This story went on to inspire numerous books that came after, as did the templates that formed its cast of characters, which were famously based off of authors Weis and Hickman's own D&D group.

For a young reader, this series could be a doorway to so many new worlds.

The Lyonesse Trilogy

The Lyonesse Trilogy is a group of three fantasy novels by the legendary Jack Vance. Set in the European Dark Ages, in the mythical Elder Isles, west of France and southwest of Britain, a generation or two before the birth of King Arthur, the stories contain references to Atlantis and Arthurian mythology, and tell a classic epic fantasy adventure.

In the real world... legend says that the Elder Isles were a real place that vanished beneath the waves in a single night, somewhere around 1100 BCE. Supposedly, the people there committed a crime so heinous that God took revenge on them. What that crime was is unknown, but the story goes that a horrific storm occurred over the course of a single night, and an enormous wave swallowed the island by the time the sun rose the next day.

In the books... This is a story about Princess Suldrun, the daughter of King Casmir of Lyonesse, one of the countries that make up the Elder Isles. Suldrun resisted the marriage her father arranged, so he confines her to the garden as punishment. At the same time, the two young princes of Troicinet, Lyonesse's chief rival, Aillas and Trewan are on a diplomatic tour or the Elder Isles. Trewan is meant to be the next king, but while in port, he learns that his father has died, meaning Allias is next in the line of succession. So Trewan pushes Aillas overboard, who then washes ashore at Suldrun's garden. Allias and Suldrun do the young romance thing (sex). She gets pregnant. They're discovered. He's imprisoned. She commits suicide. And her baby son, Dhrun, is kidnapped by the fairies and replaced with the changeling, Madouc. When Allias finally escapes his prison, he vows to find Dhrun…

What follows is a classic high fantasy adventure involving Wizards and trolls, fairies and knights, magic and daring escapes, great battles and haunted forests. There's duels and rescues and heroes riding to save the day at the last moment. There's a lot of dark ages history, a lot of sex, and a lot of violence, but none of it is graphic, if that makes sense. In the end, good triumphs and evil is punished. Also, there’s a mysterious green pearl that gets swallowed by a fish...

Which is how I first discovered this book. I was visiting my aunt in L.A. and we were in a B. Dalton's. The Green Pearl had just came out, and as soon as I saw it, I was interested. It has the coolest looking cover I had ever seen, this green knight riding a green cat as it leaped into battle. I wanted it. Obviously, I was a fan of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, so this makes sense. But then my aunt pointed out that it was the second book in the series. Had I read the first? I found the first book, Lyonesse, on the shelf, and it had, at least to my almost 11 year old mind, a decidedly less cool cover (see above). But still, I wanted to read the Green Pearl, and as a life-long comic book fan, I have always been nothing if not a big Completionist, so I started at the beginning.

I've probably read it a half dozen times since.

Honestly, while the Green Pearl ended up being cool, it wasn't nearly as cool as Lyonesse. And then there's Madouc. I looked for that book for years. Years! I was obsessed with finding it. Published in 1990, every single book store I went to had no record of it. None of them. I began to think that it didn't actually exist. I finally found it randomly, in the late 90s, one day while not even looking, while idling in the stacks at the Boulder Bookstore on Pearl St. in Boulder, Colorado. I glanced over and there it was, half-shoved in one of the lower shelves. I just stared at it for a moment. I couldn't believe it. It felt like a trick was being played on me. I bought it, obviously, and it turned out to be both everything I wanted, and also didn't quite measure up, but then... that's the nature of the quest for the grail, I guess.

Anyway...

The Lyonesse trilogy felt like the first "real" book I read as a kid. They were dark and complex and smart. They were sometimes mean and scary, and they contained ideas and words that I couldn't pronounce, didn't quite understand, or both, and I had to figure them out on my own either by context clues, or by looking them up in the dictionary. The stories definitely involved things that weren't meant "for kids" too, but as a result, they opened my eyes not just to new worlds, but to entirely new concepts. They were dense too, challenging reads, hard to get into. Lyonesse starts with a huge info-dump of the various kings and kingdoms of the Elder Isles, and it was not easy to get through. But I did, and I was rewarded for it. So these were the books that taught me that a story isn’t just about the ending, it’s about the journey.

Plus, it was my first fantasy series with a map, and I love a good map...

The Chronicles of Prydain

The Chronicles of Prydain are five high fantasy coming-of-age novels from the 1960s by Lloyd Alexander, including The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King.

While the stories and the characters are all Alexander's, they draw heavily on themes, ideas, and culture that is inspired by Welsh folklore, especially the names, many of which are pulled Welsh myth or history. The word Prydain is actually the Welsh name of Britain. And that’s where the stories all take place… Prydain, a fictional country of several kingdoms, all ruled over by a High King. But the story centers on a boy named Taran, the classic youth of unknown parentage. He lives on a farm under the care of an old enchanter named Dallben and a farmer named Coll. Taran dreams of being a great hero, but in reality, he is just the "Assistant Pig-Keeper" on the farm, and is tasked with caring for Hen Wen, a small white pig, who is clairvoyant.

When Hen Wen runs away, the books follow Taran on a series of adventures where, with the help of his companions, the headstrong Princess Eilonwy, the flamboyant bard Fflewddur Fflam, the wild beast-man Gurgi, and the dwarf Doli, as well as the occasional bit of help from the Fair Folk and the warriors known as the Sons of Don, Taran protects Prydain from the evil Arawn. Known as the Death-Lord, they are the master of the dark fortress of Annuvin, in the Land of the Dead, from whence the evil Horned King rides forth at the head of an army of "Cauldron-Born" (undead soldiers who were reanimated by the Black Cauldron), as well as the terrifying and bloodthirsty Huntsmen of Annuvin, and the race of monstrous birds called the Gwythaints. As the story goes on, Taran grows into his destiny as a hero of the people, and a leader of men.

At one point, somewhere around ten years old, I had both the collected works of The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis, and the collected works of The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. I loved these books way more than I did the Narnia stories. Even back then, I had an innate aversion to Christian tomfoolery.

The Chronicles of Prydain were an early introduction into the kind of book that would later become a staple in my reading-for-pleasure world: the multi-book epic fantasy series, stuff like The Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones. Fun, exciting, well-written, and new reader friendly, not to mention quick reads, but complex enough, with a mix of actual history and strange concepts to keep a young reader thinking, these books also have the camaraderie 9f group of stalwart friends on a quest similar to the Potter stories too. Plus, the benefit of the Prydain books being 60 plus years old is that the story is complete, so there won’t be any huge gaps in the story as the author wanders off or dies or both.

And finally… the Black Cauldron is also a Disney movie. Released in 1985, it was one of the last films from Disney Animation before the Little Mermaid/Pixar eras took over, so there’s a multimedia aspect too.

So there you go!

There are three young adult books series that are not only much better written than the Harry Potter books, they were all written by authors who, while they may or may not have been perfect, or even good, people, at least they aren't using their massive riches to actively make this world a much worst place by targeting and hurting people, specifically transpeople.

Sometimes that's the most you can ask for.